


Far From Home

by lferion



Category: Battle of Tollense River c. 1250 bce
Genre: Before Battle, Being Lost, Bronze Age, Drabble Sequence, Gen, Triple Drabble, Yuletide 2016, Yuletide Madness 2016, Yuletide Madness Drabble Invitational, antiquity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 04:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9055558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: Really Lost Mitanni





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ellen Fremedon](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Ellen+Fremedon), [cnoocy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnoocy/gifts).



> All errors of history/fact are my own, hopefully not too egregious.

* * *

They were so very lost. The captain looked over his company of twelve-squads, men huddled together around tiny fires with their knees up under their kilts, all manner of things pressed into service as cloaks. They were lost, and cold — though the day was near endless, night short and nothing like the dark of home. What had been home, before their southern neighbors teamed up against Mitanni, and sensible people did what they could to survive. They had been too far north to help, and now it seemed they were too far north for even their gods to help them. 

But not, praise Mitra! too far for them to find them. For they were not alone in this cold, green summer. Other war-bands, chariot-troops and foot-solders, horsemen and archers and spear-men. People of every shade, hair of every color, a cacophony of tongues. They were camped near a company from Troia — one of their number spoke like a scribe, an interpreter, a scholar, and had been taken, not under their wing, but as allies and treated as fellows, not strangers. It was from them Kuli had learned why such a force had gathered. The Amber Road had brought them here.

In the morning, there would be battle, and in that they would not be lost. Fighting they could do, as long as they had earth under their chariot-wheels, air for their arrows, opponents for their thirsty red swords. Their armament was unmatched, their training superb, each twelve-squad a force to be reckoned with, the whole of them — three twelves of twelve — a veritable army, and they were not friendless in the coming fray. Kuli sprinkled the last of his incense on his small blaze. “Let Fire find flame, let the lost be found, be with us in battle and beyond.”

* * *

* * *


End file.
